Trip to Norway and Lapland 27.6. – 7.7.2019 with family, part 3
At noon we crossed the border and I started to collect Norwegian ticks, which was totally new category for me. I had been in Norway once before, but it was somewhere late 70’s. You wouldn’t never guess what was my first Norwegian tick on those high mountains… so I tell you. It was little disappointingly a
Common Gull. I was expecting Ptarmigan, Golden Eagle or Gyr Falcon. :smoke:3
There seemed to be very few birds in those mountains, but the weather wasn’t good either; rain more or less. I got my second tick when we landed down to sea shore;
Oystercatcher, which eventually was one of the most usually seen birds during our visit in Norway.
We made little stop in Bjerkvik and during that I saw
Magpies, Hooded Crows and
Fieldfares.
When driving road E10 towards Tjeldsund Bridge, two
Elks (Moose for Americans
) jumped to the road. I – and co drivers in other cars - had to stop for few minutes, cos the other Elk couldn’t decide whether she wanted to cross the road or not. Fortunately, all survived the incident without a scratch.
About 2 pm we crossed huge Tjelsund Bridge and arrived island of Hinnoya. Landscapes continued to improve – even though there was nothing to complain about those before. Although there was still water came from the sky, almost without a break, my Norwegian list continued improve as well – few to mention;
Rough-legged Buzzard in Fortjord,
White-tailed Eagles and
Arctic Skua in Andoya.
With couple short stops we continued all the way up, until we were the most northern tip of Archipelago of Vesteralen, Andenes at 6.20 pm. We had a very nice apartment, which had a view of the breakwaters protected bay, whose shores and small islands were colonies of gulls and terns. Immediately I set up a telescope in front of one of the windows and started looking at the birds. Most of a gulls were
Greater Black-backed Gulls and I think all the Terns were
Arctic. But there was also my first lifer of the trip:
Black-legged Kittiwake! On the bay was swimming
Goosanders, Red-breasted Mergansers, Common Eiders and few fly by
Great Cormorants. On our side of the bay was also
White Wagtails, Northern Wheatears and of course
Oystercatchers.
Meanwhile my wife cooked tuna pasta (that wonderful woman |:$|) and we ate that days first proper meal after breakfast in Kiruna. Fortunately, the rain was taking a break, so we went for an evening stroll to explore the small town of Andenes. We admired Kittiwakes nests on building roofs and walls. They have quite different voice than other gulls, almost like kittens
meow... (I wonder are they named after that: kittens – Kitti??? :h?
I managed to see a swimming
Otter from the pier while watching the sea, but it disappeared as I began to cheer on my fellow travelers.
And then it was time to us disappeared too - to watch beautiful dreams. After first day my Norwegian list stood on 26 bird species and 2 mammals.
Next “morning” I wake up early, about 3.15 am. Sky was misty and rainy, but there wasn’t dark at all. I drove to Kleivodden view, where you can see island of Foroya, which is the best place to see Gannets from “mainland”, I had been told. When I get there it didn’t rain and I erect scope and started to watch birds. Indeed, there was
Northern Gannets in island, and also
Cormorants, Gulls,
Black Guillemots and –
Oystercatchers. I had been there only couple of minutes, when it started to rain. I escaped to the car and decided to drive further south towards Bleik and Stave, where I turn around and drove back. I saw and heard several
Curlews and
Common Snipes. Fieldfare seemed to be very common there and pretty common was also
Redwing. Mornings nicest sight was
Short-eared Owl who was sitting on rock by the road. Almost as nice was
Ring Ouzel near Kleivodden when driving back. Another try at Kleivodden didn’t last much longer than first one – after 15 minutes it started rain again. There was a couple of Curlews on shore this time and few Pipits, which I didn’t recognized. I’d seen
Meadow Pipit before on that morning in a few places – also on the shoreline - so I thought maybe these were also Mipits.
The clock was only half past five, but the rain bored me and I decided to go back to our accommodation.